October 1

At 57, this year’s October 1, National Day 2017, was fated to enter and exit with minimum fuss.

Nigeria’s Golden Jubilee (though without much gold to show) was seven years past. The Diamond Jubilee (with a promise of true diamond to come?) is still three years away.

Yet, some maladies came to blow away that anonymity, replacing it with raw fear — a deja vu of horrors once endured?

It all started with the Nnamdi Kanu Biafra advocacy, which not only set the whole of the South East on virtual fire, but also sentenced other areas to an emotive tinder.

Then came the baleful riposte, from some Arewa “youths”; who growled that should the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB) be serious with its secessionist threat, then the Igbo, living and earning their living in the North, must quit that region by October 1 — or else!

That raised the bogey, of a possible 50-yearly bloodbath — 1967, 2017, 2067? — while Nigerians grapple with Nigeria’s unending crisis of nationhood.

Well, October 1 has come and gone; and the ballyhooed thunder of slaughter has all but stilled! But could it be another Ides of March and the Julius Caesar tragedy?

The Ides of March is come, the intrepid Caesar faced down his prophet of doom. Ay, countered the other, but it’s not gone. In truth, before the Ides of March eclipsed, Caesar himself was history!

For starters, Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB has, in Achebe-speak, run itself lame before the real dance began. Kanu himself has vanished, a cheap fugitive from the law, though there is some infantile propaganda, as to his living — or dying.

Still, given that the IPOB campaign was driven by the impassioned orchestration of Igbo “marginalization”, it is interesting that the Anglophone Cameroon issue is flaring at about the same time.

Remember the 1961 plebiscite, in which the Anglophone south-western flank of Cameroon voted to join the Francophone majority to the east and north, while the northern tract of the same English-administered territory opted to stay, as Nigeria’s Sardauna Province?

Why these southern Cameroonians decided for a new country was partly the ominous political crisis, in the new Nigeria, less than one year after independence. But the local and more pressing decider was the charge of “domination” by the then Eastern Region majority — the Igbo.

Chinua Achebe it was who, among the many Igbo aphorisms in his works, said a man that, for donkey years, ran away from a certain ailment, yet ended up dying the same death, had simply lost his care. Anglophone Cameroon fled from feared Igbo domination in Nigeria. Now, it is crying blue murder, under alleged domination by Francophone Cameroon!

Ironically, the same Igbo would-be dominators of yore are themselves howling “marginalization” in a Nigeria that just turned 57, even after a futile violent attempt at secession (1967-1970).

Now, what is happening? Some political karma at play? Or just the spectre of unrelieved domination, that turns everything a fevered nightmare of exclusive “Igbo marginalization”? Mere analytic projections, crying for more definitive researches!

Still, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Independence Day speech sharp rebuke of Igbo elders, who should have cautioned Kanu, was spot on. If angry youths can work themselves into a lather that knows no history, elders cannot permit themselves that ruinous luxury.

Well, with the callow Kanu running himself out of town, the Nigerian national question is resolved? Hell, no!

Indeed, the South East excitement, making October 1 loom as some sure Armageddon to come, exposed the stark fault lines — at least among the pigeon-holing elite, jousting for political gravy, but never shy of using their fellow ethnics as tragically disposable battering rams.

Take the North. Faced with the rather irascible IPOB taunts, the Arewa political elite played the Nigerian-unity-isn’t-negotiable card. Yet, that’s another illusion, if not outright delusion.

Nigerian unity — or otherwise — would have to come from the people themselves, not from some self-appointed champions, living up to the old cynical quip: patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel.

Still, you could hardly fault President Buhari’s hardline stance. He wasn’t elected to dismember Nigeria. He was elected to improve it as an entity.

Having admitted that, however, there often is a gulf between frozen law and living reality. De jure, Nigeria is one and ought to be united and strong. But de facto, it is hardly so.

The National Day anniversary thus offers another window for serious thinking to turn Nigeria, warts and all, into that dream country it is capable of being, if only everyone would work hard at it.

That is why the North must drop its instinctive opposition to re-working the federation to a more workable, productive and prosperous one, away from the present centralist desert that delivers stupendous poverty from stupendous wealth.

In return, proponents of “restructuring”, must cease serving it as some anti-North comeuppance; for that region’s past excesses. If the country is successfully reworked, it would be win-win for all — and the long-suffering northern masses would perhaps be the greatest beneficiaries.

That brings the matter to the grand “restructuring” and “true federalism” barons of the South West. Since 1949 when, with Path to Nigerian Freedom, the immortal Obafemi Awolowo started his federalism push, Nigeria’s West had always been champions of re-federalization for development.

Yet, when the opportunities at a rare consensus came calling, what some Yoruba elders, former young Turks under Awo, offered was mere dross.

While some were busy pointing at real or imagined “Yoruba enemies”, others were goading IPOB on, promising a Yoruba support they lacked the capacity to deliver. Yet others, poor young romantics, spurred by these elders’ open show of ethnic supremacy, foamed in the mouth, proclaiming the Paradise Republic of Oduduwa. What hubris!

The main dampener, to the near-consensus over restructuring, is the eminent bad faith, on which horse it galloped into town. It all started with the fad to hate and demonize the “Hausa-Fulani”, just because a certain Muhammadu Buhari was president.

Then, to the South West progressive grandees, flashing their Awo franchise as Geoffery Chaucer’s Pardoner would, in Canterbury Tales, flash his papal pardon, hot, fresh and smoking from Rome, it was additional gall, that a certain Bola Ahmed Tinubu, midwifed the Buhari coalition!

Still despite this human dross, the Nigerian government should seriously address re-federalizing towards a productive Nigeria. That should be the principal message from National Day 2017, after the aborted thunder and fury.